‘Now here, Mr Coulson,’ he said to the one carrying the notebook, ‘you will see the reality of the situation without the spin of political correctness. What we’re really up against.’
Coulson the reporter nodded, stifled a yawn. Tried not to let his distaste of Oaten show. Too much.
‘And you, Mr McKean, can get some excellent pictures to show to your readers. Bring the horror into the homes.’
McKean ignored him, pretended to be fiddling with his aperture.
Oaten flicked his thinning floppy fringe back from his forehead, hoping it covered his bald spot, turned and opened the door with a flourish. Kev Bright lay in the bed, propped up on pillows, drip attached to his arm, pyjamas covering his torso, eyes open, watching. A heavy-set woman in her mid-thirties was sitting in an armchair reading Take a Break. Hearing the door, she threw the magazine aside, jumped up and almost ran to the bedside, where she began stroking Kev’s hand, heels clacking on the floor like horses’ hooves. Her ample body had been squeezed into the clothes of an eighteen-year-old on a Friday night out down the Bigg Market. She sat down, her miniskirt riding all the way up her thighs. She left it there.
The two young journalists exchanged glances, raised eyebrows, tried not to smile, let alone laugh. There would be some serious payback going on when they got back to the newsroom.
The door slammed; the two bodyguards remained stationed outside.
‘What a beautiful picture,’ said Oaten. ‘How devoted. You can start snapping now.’
‘Can you ask her to put her tits away?’ said McKean. ‘We’re from the Chronicle, not Razzle.’
Oaten’s face flushed from anger and embarrassment. Another flick of the hair and he crossed to the woman. He tried keeping his voice low, but the reporters still heard his words, the anger behind them.
‘Diane, what did I tell you? No heels, no low-cut tops. Jesus Christ, what’s the matter with you?’
The woman looked scared, flinched at his words like they were accompanied by slaps.
‘Sorry, Rick. I’ll … I’ll go home an’ change, like …’
‘You fuckin’ stupid cow,’ he hissed. ‘There’s no time. Just, just make yourself decent.’
Diane began some detailed rearranging of her copious breasts. McKean looked tempted to start snapping. Coulson gave him a look of mock admonishment.
‘Right, lads,’ Oaten said, turning back to them with forced bonhomie, ‘this is Kevin Bright. Hard grafter, a proud working man. Salt of the earth. A true, yet unsung, working-class hero. And a very good friend of mine. And his … girlfriend. And what happens two nights ago?’ Oaten thrust his head at the two reporters, eyes wide. ‘What happened? He gets knifed, that’s what. Knifed.’
Coulson and McKean waited. Oaten gestured to the notepad.
‘Write that down. Knifed.’
Coulson didn’t move.
‘Go on.’
Coulson sighed, scribbled something on the pad, looked up again. Oaten was walking round the room, building up to some dramatic announcement. While his back was turned, Coulson showed McKean what he had put on the pad: a cartoon of an erect penis spouting sperm. McKean tried not to laugh.
Oaten reached the bedside, turned back to them. ‘And who knifed him?’
They waited.
‘Will you tell them, Kevin, or shall I?’
‘You,’ said Kev, his voice sounding genuinely weak.
Oaten patted him on the arm, gave what he presumed was a smile. ‘I shall. Youths. A gang of them. How many, Kevin? Five?’
Kev nodded.
‘Five. Five pieces of scum against one honest, hard-working man. A totally unprovoked attack.’ Oaten began pacing the floor again. ‘And you know what else? They were Asian. Indian. Muslim, in fact. You see? That’s—’
‘How do you know?’ Coulson asked.
‘What?’ Oaten clearly wasn’t happy at being interrupted.
‘They said. You see—’
‘What did they say?’
Oaten hid his anger as well as glass hides sunlight. ‘Jihad. Something about a jihad.’
Coulson tried to speak again but Oaten ignored him. He declaimed his rehearsed speech, not stopping for any interruptions. ‘You see what we’re up against? You see? An unprovoked attack. You call us racist? I say we’re realist. You say we breed hate? I say we’re honest about the situation. You say we’re angry? You’re right there. We are. Angry. And defending our territory. Making our streets safe for honest, law-abiding citizens to walk down.’
Oaten stood back, looked victorious.
‘Any questions?’
Coulson turned over a page in his notebook. ‘Yeah,’ he said, lazily scratching his cheek with his pen. ‘I’d like to ask the honest hard-working etcetera whether he fought back.’
Oaten looked uneasy. ‘Why?’
Coulson shrugged. ‘I just thought someone who has two convictions for football hooliganism and a life ban from St James’s Park would have put up a fight. That’s all.’
Oaten looked like he was ready to explode. His upper lip slipped back over his teeth in a snarl, like a wild animal ready to attack. Struggling to control his temper.
Flash.
The camera went off full in his face. And again.
The two journalists nodded to each other. Coulson flipped his notebook shut. McKean slung his camera over his shoulder.
‘Think we’ve got everything here, thanks,’ said Coulson. ‘We’ll be on our way.’
They turned and left, closing the door behind them.
No one spoke, no one moved. They could hear laughter trailing down the hall, running feet. Oaten was still red in the face, his body shaking.
The door opened. In stepped a man; thin, suited, in his fifties, his hair close cropped, rimless glasses.
‘Bastards, fucking bastards …’ Oaten’s fists clenched and unclenched. He noticed the new arrival in the room, stopped. ‘Mr Sharples …’
‘I told you to wait for me,’ said Mr Sharples, his South African accent making all his words guttural and harsh. ‘Why didn’t you fucking listen?’
Oaten stared at him, too angry to speak.
‘I’m sure they made you look a fool. And I’m sure you did your best to help them.’
‘Don’t … lecture me …’
A hard, cruel light ignited behind Mr Sharples’s eyes. His voice was calm, all the more menacing for it. ‘Let’s get this straight. I’m not here to give you good ideas or make valid points. I’m here for you to fucking listen to me. Got that?’ His accent turning the words into verbal machine-gun bullets.
Oaten stood there, shaking. ‘This is my party—’
‘And you’ll run it the way I tell you. Got that?’
‘Don’t fuckin’—’
‘Got that?’
Looking into Mr Sharples’s eyes was like staring into Rick Oaten’s worst nightmare. His head dropped. He nodded.
‘Good.’ Mr Sharples crossed to the door. ‘Right. We do this professionally. A full press call on the steps of the hospital. TV, print media, the works. No chance for argument or answering back. And if you want to be the fucking party leader you start behaving like it. Or I’ll find someone who can.’ He looked at his watch. ‘If I leave now I might catch them. Stop them printing.’ The overhead lights glinted on the frameless glass before his eyes. Made his eyes hard, inscrutable. ‘Try not to fuck too much up when I’m gone.’
He closed the door silently behind him.
Oaten’s fury hadn’t diminished. It still needed an outlet. He turned to Kev.
‘You, you fucker. I want you out of that bed. Now.’
‘But Rick, I’ve been stabbed. Jason Mason—’
‘Don’t fuckin’ “but Rick” me!’ Oaten was screaming in Kev’s face now. Diane shrank away in fear. ‘You get up out of that fuckin’ pit. I want you on the street. I want you to find that kid, that little cunt, before he can do any damage.’
‘I’ve got the boys lookin’ for him …’
/> ‘The boys?’ Oaten leaned across, put his fingers inside Kev’s mouth, grabbed his tongue, pulled on it, hard. Twisted. ‘Don’t fuckin’ talk … don’t … say … fuckin’ anythin’ …’ Incoherent with rage, struggling to regain control.
‘The boys,’ he said eventually, gasping. ‘The boys. You’re gonna join them. You’re gonna find him an’ bring him to me. That clear? You got that?’
Kev, spittle oozing from the sides of his mouth, mutely nodded.
‘Good.’
Oaten dropped Kev’s tongue, stood back, breathed out heavily. Kev massaged his aching mouth. Diane stared in horror.
Oaten tried to regain what passed for equilibrium. When he could trust his own limbs he walked to the door.
‘Fuckers,’ he said. ‘Fuckers.’
The door vibrated in the frame when he slammed it behind him.
Abdul-Haq stood on the hastily erected platform and looked out before him. He saw faces: concerned, frightened, angry. Mostly brown faces, a smattering of white ones, a few very dark ones. He saw people worried about their futures, their ways of life. He saw TV cameras, print journalists.
He saw a crowd, ready to be worked.
When they saw him take the stand they stopped talking. He waited patiently, giving their conversations a chance to subside, replacing the noise with an expectant silence. Ready to swap fear for reassurance.
He glanced behind at the seated couple, well but conservatively dressed, the woman leaning into the man for support, the man with his arm around her, comforting her. She crying; him trying not to. He gave them a reassuring smile.
Behind the platform, almost out of sight from the main crowd, were Waqas and Omar. His personal bodyguards. Well muscled, wearing black T-shirts and black jeans, their earpieces barely visible. Waqas’s T-shirt was long-sleeved, the shiny patches of pink skin, the burn marks covered up on Abdul-Haq’s order. People were scared by them, intimidated, offended. Waqas agreed. That was why he put them on display, along with his scarred face. Omar, with only a scar running down his left cheek, had got off lightly by comparison.
Abdul-Haq stepped up to the microphone. ‘Peace be upon you.’ His amplified voice, rich and rounded, echoed round the crowd. They responded, ready to listen.
He looked around again, saw a drab, run-down, redbrick street in the Arthur’s Seat area of Newcastle. A poor area, predominantly immigrant, whether Asian, African, Eastern European or university student. Those already there too poor to leave. The kind of disadvantaged area where poverty outstrips opportunity, where fear turns to hatred faster than work turns to wealth. A place ripe for investment and redevelopment.
He opened his arms for emphasis. ‘I’m standing right on the spot where Sooliman Patel was murdered. By racists.’ The word emphasized with a strong hand gesture. ‘And with me—’ he gestured to the seated couple behind him ‘—are his parents. It has cost them a lot to come here today. More than I hope any of us, with the grace of Allah, will ever have to experience. But they wanted to do so to share this moment with you. To make sure it never happens again.’
Mrs Patel’s shoulders heaved as another bout of tears overtook her. Mr Patel’s arm tightened around her shoulder.
‘Sooliman Patel was playing with his friends just over there.’ He gestured in the vague direction of the Town Moor. ‘Playing cricket. When he was snatched from us by Fascist bullyboys. By racist thugs. And murdered.’ He leaned forward on the final word, pitched it up, heard it ring out over the crowd. He shook his head. ‘Was he a criminal? Had he done something to anger these boys? No. Then why? What was his crime?’ He scanned the crowd again, waiting, knowing no one would give the answer, knowing they were waiting for him to supply it. ‘Being Asian. Being a Muslim.’ Again his head forward, his voice raised, the words unmistakably emphatic.
He went on. Gave a brief precis of Sooliman Patel’s life. A loving son and brother. A fine student. A good boy. Mrs Patel wept all the more; Mr Patel held her all the harder.
Abdul-Haq looked round, caught the eyes of the crowd. Felt that familiar tingle inside, knew he had them. They were listening to his words, ready to obey his commands, ready to believe whatever he told them, even if it contradicted the evidence of their own eyes. He never tired of having that power.
He pointed to the ground, ramping up his oration. ‘This is where he died. This very point. His body was found here.’ He flung his arms out. ‘Look around you. What do you see? Who lives here? We do. The West End of Newcastle was not a prosperous area before Muslims moved in. Before even Sikhs, before Hindus came. Before we set up shops for our own people, providing food, clothing, jewellery. If this area is prosperous now it is because of what we did. How we changed it.’ Another hard, unblinking look out at the crowd. ‘And there are those who want to stop that. Who hate—’ again his head forward, again the word unmistakably emphasized. ‘—hate what we have done here. And want to stop us. And we are not going to let them.’
He stood back, waited for the applause. It wasn’t long in coming.
Sooliman Patel hadn’t lived in those run-down streets. Abdul-Haq didn’t live there. There were a few quite prosperous businesses, but not in a great way. But no one pulled him up on it. Everyone wanted to believe in what he said.
Everyone wanted, he thought, to find a target to hate.
He started speaking again. Knowing what he was going to say, knowing what they wanted to hear. Luxuriating in the power that he could control a crowd with just his voice. His mind skipped to old newsreel footage of Hitler, of the Führer driving what seemed like thousands of people into frenzies of ecstasy with just his voice. Understood how seductive that was. People wanted to believe in something. Wanted to still the rational voice in their heads, be part of something that they have convinced themselves is right.
Our streets aren’t safe.
Our way of life is under attack.
If we have to defend ourselves it is our right.
More applause.
Abdul-Haq became aware of some kind of disturbance at the back of the crowd. Most hadn’t noticed, their attention so focused on him. He had only noticed because of a sixth sense honed through years of street oratory. He glanced briefly in the direction the noise was coming from, sized up the situation immediately. A couple of skinheads, drunk, chanting racist slogans. The applause was drowning them out but people were starting to look, draw the attention away from him. That couldn’t be allowed to happen.
A surreptitious hand gesture and Waqas and Omar detached themselves from the back of the platform and swiftly skirted round the outside of the crowd. The skinheads were dragged away from the crowd, before even the TV cameras could follow. Abdul-Haq knew what would happen to them next. He didn’t expend too much thought on their fate. They had brought it on themselves. Instead he turned to the crowd again. Smiled.
Announced a candlelight vigil at the mosque on Grainger Park Road. All would be welcome. Spoke words of healing, of conciliation. Laced them with threats of unequivocal action. Held hands with Mr and Mrs Patel, asked the crowd to pray with him.
Hoped the sound of the intruders being dealt with wouldn’t ruin the ambience.
It didn’t.
Eyes closed, Abdul-Haq listened to the silence, smiled.
The people were his.
7
Peta had always had a soft spot for Newcastle’s Civic Centre. Standing on the corners of Barras Bridge and St Mary’s Place in the Haymarket end of the city, it had been built in the Sixties during the T. Dan Smith era and, unlike most of the brutalist concrete monoliths of the period, was something quite beautiful.
It looked like a huge, secular cathedral. White and circular, it was designed round a courtyard with an imposing twelve-storey main block rising out of it. Capping the block was a copper lantern and beacon with three castles from the coat of arms. And the bit Peta loved best: sea horses. All round the top. So completely unexpected they made anyone looking up smile.
She walked into the reception
area, up to the desk. Her sunglasses hooked over the front of her T-shirt. Now back in her regulation work uniform of trainers, T-shirt and, in a concession to the heat, black linen combats instead of jeans, she felt more herself. In control.
Peta had gone straight from her mother’s to the gym. Swimming, thirty minutes with weights and the treadmill, her regular tae kwon do session; her usual method of sorting her head out, even more dependent on it recently. Then a phone call to Amar to find he was still away. She was getting fed up with leaving messages for him. Then work, researching and reading.
Her university psychology course was on hold, lack of money since Albion’s demise. She was glad of the distraction, stopped her thinking of floodlit cellars and body parts, of dead women and knife-waving killers.
So, coffee and notepad beside her, she had sat at the kitchen table and opened Trevor Whitman’s book. With some trepidation, looking for mention of her mother and father. Relieved to find none, she got down to work.
Prioritizing, she decided to leave off playing Where Are They Now? with the Hollow Men until later and concentrate on finding anyone who had a grudge against Whitman.
That was the plan. However, she had become sidetracked. Whitman’s story, his life, had drawn her in. With strong, clear and compelling writing, he told of a working-class kid from Byker in Newcastle who was the first in his family to go to university.
He wrote of the sacrifice and the hardship. His father had worked in a factory manufacturing asbestos, a job that eventually killed him. His mother had pursued the company for compensation, like so many others in the country had successfully done, on the grounds of wilful negligence, and got nowhere. Shark-like lawyers had circled, eating up the funds, disappearing and leaving only bills in their wake when the claim failed. Whitman believed this had contributed to his mother’s early death.
Angry and disillusioned, yet impassioned for social justice, he had been given a scholarship to attend Newcastle University. He chose politics and law. She imagined the young Whitman, hurt, alone and angry, surrounded by people from more affluent backgrounds, the offspring of those responsible for his parents’ death even, there by dint of hard work, not favour, nursing and nurturing a huge chip on his shoulder. It took no imagination at all to see how he became caught up in radical politics.
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